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<div>Professor Ledyard's notes -- pointing out the connection (or
comparison) to/with earlier attempts by Koreans to simplify Han'gûl
and by the Chinese to simplify the Chinese writing system -- is
interesting. It brings me to another point: writing systems and power
relations. I would like to argue that the introduction of Han'gûl in
some part of Indonesia is all about political power, at least more so
than anything else.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Typing "Brushes with Power" into Amazon.com search
window results in lots of electric toothbrush offers (that's important
too), but there also is a 1991 book by Richard C. Kraus with that
title, a study of the connection between calligraphy and political
power in China. The most often quoted modern example is probably Mao
Zedong's calligraphy for the<i> Renmin Ribao</i> (People's Daily). He
produced the paper's actual masthead. There you go, the head of state
and mastermind of the Chinese revolution designs the masthead of the
main national daily newspaper. You will find that even today's
Internet version of the paper, even the English version, still uses
Mao's calligraphy. Kraus writes: "On the eve of victory, when
many Chinese Communists thought that calligraphy would be abolished as
feudal, Mao Zedong wrote this 'pretty' masthead for<i> People's
Daily</i>." (p. 63) In all East Asia we saw attempts to (a)
simplify the existing writing system, and (b) to use replacement
systems to write the national language(s). The height of these
tendencies was in the 1920s and 1930s, but there are also some later
attempts, even after 1945. All serious activities seem to have ended
in the late 1950s, however.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The magazine<i> Kaebyôk</i> (1920-26), for example, had an --
to use Ross King's smart term -- Han'gûl "online" (= on
one line) version of its title on the cover.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div> <img
src="cid:p06240600c6a58820082c@[192.168.0.3].1.0"></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Others were far more radical, did not just try to
"modernize" (read Westernize) Korean script, but tried to
replace both, script and language, with Esperanto. The Esperanto
movement was at the time indeed very popular in all East Asia (and of
course in Europe). To many it seemed to offer a third way to achieve
modernization without colonization, a pro-active integration into the
modern world system on congenial terms with the West.</div>
<div> </div>
<div> <img
src="cid:p06240600c6a58820082c@[192.168.0.3].1.1"></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The Esperanto experiment pretty much ended in the 1930s when the
"transfer" of the main European political fronts to East
Asia -- liberal democracy, Marxism, anarchism, Fascism -- had been
completed. Anarchism had already been turned away by the early 1930s,
and Esperanto with it. The transfer of Western modernity, of course,
was far from complete. Various attempts at Westernizing national
scripts were continued. Professor Ledyard already mentioned the
Chinese debate in the late 1950s, and in North Korea we see the
"purification" of the Korean script system (stopping the use
of Hanja) at about the same time. After liberation until the beginning
of the Korean war we also see the online debate reappearing in North
Korea. And Ross King wrote some highly interesting articles about such
debates within the Korean minority in the Russian Far East. With the
strengthening of the East Asian nation-states and the stabilization of
the current political systems all such debates disappeared. I even
doubt that, if it were not already done in the 1950s, China would
today want to simplify its script. The terms of modernization changed
because the power structures have changed and are rapidly changing.
"Simplification" and "online writing" -- or even a
new, constructed, universal language (Esperanto), all associated with
the West and therefore taken as quintessentially "modern,"
are not necessarily anymore believed to be more "efficient"
than whatever already exists.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Hulbert's China quote did probably already sound weird in 1906. I
think it can only be understood within the context of colonialism and
Christian missionary work at the time. In Japan we saw some Bostonian
like Ernest Fenollosa telling the Japanese how to do Japanese painting
the Japanese way, and in Korea we meet Hulbert missionizing Koreans on
how to better use a national Korean script system instead of
Hanja.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div>Frank</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
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<div>--------------------------------------<br>
Frank Hoffmann<br>
http://koreaweb.ws</div>
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